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Public school teachers now required to do student mental health assessments

What could possibly go wrong? A federal law passed in 2015 and signed by President Obama now requires public school teachers to do mental health assessments of their elementary school students, without obtaining parental permission.

You read that right: if you live in an ESSA state, your child’s mental health will be assessed by a non-medical professional in a non-medical context. The paperwork will not be protected by HIPAA laws, which means that the school district can share a teacher’s assessment of your child’s mental health with literally anyone. Parents are not asked for permission before the DESSA is administered, nor do they have any say over where the records go once they are obtained.

Worse, the assessments require teachers to fill out a form with 72 questions on each student, a time-consuming task that will likely interfere with unimportant things like teaching.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Cotour

    And who will be evaluating the teachers mental health?

    I know teachers in the New York City system, they are under sooo much pressure now, I do not know how they cope. To a man and a woman they all say “I love the kids, its the management and bureaucracy that makes everything unmanageable and sooo stressful.

    At some point all of this social / socialist “concern” and data gathering will result in no time to teach children anything. Ah, their plan comes perfectly together.

  • Chris L

    So little Sally is going to be “evaluated” by the divorced 40 year old recovering alcoholic who teaches her math. He doesn’t really know much about child psychology (and doesn’t have custody of his own kids), only sees Sally for about 35 minutes a day, but we now have to consider him an expert in Sally’s mental state. Yeah, that will work.

  • wayne

    Chris–
    great stuff.

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